1. Field of the Invention
The invention is related to a method for combining program codes or parts of program codes in a programming language dependent way.
2. Description of the Related Art
Comparing texts or text portions in order to identify changes that were applied in a text portion compared to another text portion are widely known.
For example, European patent 1 000 5512 discloses a method for determining similarities of text portions. This method allows for comparing lines of a first text portion to lines in a second text portion by using a modified Levenshtein algorithm in order to determine whether or not some words in a first line of a first test portion are also included in a second line of a second text portion. Thereby, it can be determined whether text of a second text portion is included, or can be considered to be included, in a first text portion. The method according to EP 1 000 5512, therefore, relies on comparing the words of a line in the first text portion to words of another line in a second text portion.
It is also known to compare each and every sign of a first line in a first text portion to a second line in a second text portion in order to determine whether the first line of the first text portion can be considered to be included in the second line of the second text portion. These algorithms have the advantage of working independently of the programming language.
While such methods work very well in view of comparing a first and a second text portion with each other, they might not always be suitable for comparing text written for program code, since these texts or their meaning also depend on syntax and semantic. Therefore, the problem which is to be solved by the present invention is to provide a method for merging a first modified program code and a second modified program code, that were derived from a program code, in a more effective way.